• Crashing when users edited or navigated with mouse in some situations (not perfected just better)

• Better handling of upper level Excel documents. Working within cells still requires use of Purge Cache while navigating

MacSpeech Dictate 1.5.2 Release Notes

Fixed:

• Versioned commands now appear for newer versions of the same app

Note: This was most notable with the upgrade to Safari 4.

MacSpeech Dictate 1.5.1 Release Notes

Changes:

• Older licenses are now identified as "Older"

Changed the text in our License dialogs for older licenses to reduce confusion for customers

Fixed:

• UK Locale Format issue

Localized UK user would crash when profile was created.

• Creation of a profile when focus was last in TextEdit caused crash

• Crash after altering some kinds of documents (e.g. Excel)

• Editing words with hyphens causing crash

• Status window and Available Commands window overlap

On first launch the Status window and Available Commands windows would overlap.

MacSpeech Dictate 1.5 Release Notes

New Features:

● Better, Stronger, Faster speech recognition

● Vocabulary Editor

● New Commands

º Web 100 Commands

º Activate / Launch / Quit / Kill / Exit for applications

º Improved organization of Dictation group commands

● Microsoft Word and TextEdit text control enhancements

● Save Profile menu item

● Dictation target info in Status window

● Revised User Manual

Additions:

New revision of the speech recognition engine.

Increased speed and accuracy. Includes a completely new set of vocabulary data for all English dialects. Adds Spelling option to specify UK or US. Adds new profile options for Inland Northern American, Southern American and Latino American accents.

•Vocabulary Editor.

Provides the capability to Add/Delete, Manage, and Train words for a profile's vocabulary.Customization of word behaviors (e.g. spacing before and after, capitalization within titles, and pronunciation).

•New Dictation Group in the Available Commands window.

Within the Available Commands window, there is now a group called Dictation with subgroups entitled Capitalization Commands, Text and Editing and Movement, Punctuation and Special Symbols.

•Web 100 subgroup with global "Jump To" commands for the top 100 websites.

Added a set of commands for the Top 100 websites based on information found at Alexa.com.

•Extended Application Commands

Added Activate / Launch in addition to Open, as well as Quit/ Kill / Exit to the Application Commands subgroup. Only Activate and Quit are shown but the other terms will function.

•Microsoft Word text control enhancements.

Open a Microsoft Word document and Dictate will automatically run a "Cache Document". The document is then ready for dictation and voice navigation.

Graphical display of the current speech mode and provides alternative method to switch modes.

• Revised User Manual

The User Manual is updated to simplify the format, and include more step-by-step instructions as well as a longer list of built-in commands.

Changes:

• MacSpeech Dictate 1.5 profile names now end in .dictateprofile

Profiles previous to Dictate 1.5 ended in .dictationprofile

Known issues with MacSpeech Dictate 1.5

Vocabulary Editor: Advanced word options are not consistently exported. Advanced word options (e.g. spacing, capitalization, and title regulation) may not persist when words are exported. These settings will need to be re-added after import.

Dictation into some third party applications may still yield some unpredictable results. This is due to the many different ways that applications handle text. MacSpeech will continue to address these issues over time. To report a problem with a third party application, please send an email to enhancements@macspeech.com.

There are likely to be dictation and editing issues when using a list or outline mode with various word processors. Typically in these modes, word processors insert additional tabs, spaces or other characters into the document. MacSpeech Dictate may not be aware of this added text, so attempting to alter the dictated text can be problematic.

Under certain circumstances, MacSpeech Dictate can become out of sync with the text on the screen. This happens most frequently in third party applications, but can also happen in MacSpeech Dictate's built-in Note Pad. To avoid this issue edit by voice or by using the keyboard and mouse, but not both. For more details on selecting and editing text by voice, please see MacSpeech Dictate Help under the Help menu, or the MacSpeech Dictate User Manual.

Use of the Command "Scratch That" in the Recognition window will not remove the entire utterance. It will remove a single word at a time. You may also use "Scratch Word" or "Forget Word" in the Recognition window.

After re-formatting general dictation, if you delete a word by voice a leading space may remain. Use "Scratch Word" to delete the space.

Importing commands may cause duplicates of commands to be displayed. Restarting MacSpeech Dictate will resolve this issue.

Under some circumstances when executing the "Cache Document" command, MacSpeech Dictate may encounter a document that it can't read and for which it can't create a correctly formatted cache . Under those circumstances, due to the erroneous information in the cache, MacSpeech Dictate may not move the cursor to the correct place in the document. When such a navigation error occurs is dependent upon where the uninterpretable items in the document are encountered. These uninterpretable items are: pictures, hyperlinks, multi-byte characters and other "non-text" items that can be placed in a document.

If MacSpeech Dictate encounters such items while executing the "Cache Document" command, it will present you with a dialog box warning you of this problem. At this point MacSpeech Dictate will suggest that if you wish to, you can issue the "Fix Document Elements" command to correct the problem. WARNING: DATA LOSS MAY OCCUR IF YOU ISSUE THIS COMMAND! You should close the document and make a copy of it and then attempt this command on the copy of the document.

The "Fix Document Elements" command collects the document contents, removes the uninterpretable items, does a "select all" and "paste". This removes those items from the document. If all that is encountered are multi-byte characters such as 'é', then your data loss may only be any formatting, such as "bold" or "underline" or font changes. If there are pictures or hyperlinks or other non-text items in your document, then they will be lost.

After issuing the "Fix Document Elements" command, then you need to issue another "Cache Document" command and see if MacSpeech Dictate is able to correct cache the document. If you do not receive another warning dialog, then MacSpeech Dictate should be able to correctly navigate in this document.

In the event that you wish to continue without issuing the "Fix Document Elements" command, then you may not be able to navigate correctly within the document by voice. You should only add to the beginning of the document or to the end of the document.

To reiterate:

- During the "Cache Document" process you may receive a warning message regarding unknown elements in the document.

- Close the document, make a copy and open the copy. Issue the "Fix Document Elements" command.

- Issue the "Cache Document" command.

- Examine the results.

OR

- Continue on, but do not expect to reliably navigate within the document. You can still add to the beginning or to the end of the document.

For additional information, including a knowledge base of technical information and answers to frequently asked questions please see the Support Center on the MacSpeech.com web site.

Dictate (com.macspeech.dictate) is a Mac software application that has been discovered and submitted by users of Software.com.
The latest version that our users have reported running on their systems is Dictate 1.5.9. The most popular version of this application used by our users is Dictate 7849.